Annual Henri Zerner Lecture: Imprints and Erasures—A New Story of Art

In countless ways, women have been erased from the history of art. Their exhibited works have been falsely attributed to their male peers; their once-collected paintings have been left to deteriorate in museum storerooms; and many art historical accounts have questioned women’s very ability to create “great” art. We can even track the gradual removal of women’s names from the historical record in moments of deliberate, posthumous eradication. However, a growing mountain of evidence demands we recognize that women artists may have always existed—and were often quite prominent in their own places and times.

In her lecture, art historian Paris A. Spies-Gans will share this troubling history and present a series of recent discoveries that challenge the powerful, gendered assumptions that continue to inflect our views of the past. By recovering the traces of women artists—the imprints they left behind—we can update essential parts of art history’s most enduring narratives.